The Char Broil Oil Less Turkey Fryer comes highly recommended – to date over 1,600 customers have given it a 5 star rating! It’s so popular with consumers that early this year the manufacturer could not keep up with demand.

One reason is that it’s a quality cooker that produces excellent results. Another reason is that it’s a whole lot more versatile than you might think. If you only ever eat turkey on Thanksgiving Day, a greaseless turkey fryer might seem like a luxury. Read on to find out why that isn’t the case. Like so many other happy owners, you may be surprised at how often you use your fryer and all the delicious foods you can cook.

This model is a large capacity, greaseless turkey fryer designed with patented infrared cooking technology. It is for outdoor use only, and a propane tank is required but not included..

The Big Easy isn’t just for your Thanksgiving bird. In addition to healthy and delicious air fried turkey, use it year-round for all sorts of large and bulky cuts of meat. The optional accessories (sold separately) are not expensive and make it even more versatile for cooking a couple of large items at once or multiple smaller foods. The variety is almost endless, including:

whole chickens, chicken legs, chicken wings, chicken thighs

whole turkey, turkey breasts, turkey legs

beef roasts or pork loins

pork loins, or chops

slabs of beef or pork ribs

leg of lamb

bone-in hams (cured or uncured)

ducks and other waterfowl and game meat

kabobs, sausages, potatoes, corn, etc.!

One adventurous home chef even claimed great results cooking a pot roast, though I can’t quite get my head around that one. Obviously that might depend on your definition of what kind of dish a good pot roast should be.

This air fryer has a built-in grease tray to catch drippings, and it’s removable for easy emptying and cleaning. If you want to make gravy, you need to use the included foil tray liner to catch use the drippings. Since those drippings may sit in the tray for one or more hours while the meat is cooking, you also need to reheat the drippings to a temperature high enough to kill any bacteria. If you’re squeamish about such things, don’t plan on making gravy – it isn’t good for you anyway, which sort of defeats the purpose of frying oil free!

How It Works

TRU®–Infrared™ is a registered trademark because it’s a Char-Broil cooking system that uses radiant heat. It’s designed to eliminate hot spots for more even cooking, and to lock in natural juices to keep foods moist.

Don’t expect the same speed you’d get from deep fat frying. Air fryers are slower. Doneness should always be judged by a meat thermometer, but on average you can figure about 10 minutes per pound. A 16 pound turkey cooked in The Big Easy would take somewhere around 2 1/2 hours. What does save you time is that no pre-heating is required, and cleanup is immensely faster and easier than dealing with gallons of oil and the mess it creates.

Cooking without all that oil can be a definite plus when you have kids or grandkids around … or for grown-up crowds enjoying adult beverages. Of course you’ve still got fire and heat so it certainly isn’t risk free, but at least you know that if the whole thing gets knocked over you won’t have gallons of scalding oil running all over your deck.

When you’re finished cooking, this propane turkey fryer will also cool off much faster than a deep fat fryer. The downside of that is that while you’re cooking, The Big Easy can cool off faster when the air temperature is extremely cold or you have a lot of wind. On windy days or in extreme climates you may have better results if you can place your air fryer in a location that offers a little shelter from the elements.

Size & Capacity

Interior Capacity: Maximum capacity for this unit is a 16 pound turkey, and it can handle other very large cuts of meat such as leg of lamb. Also see Optional Accessories below. These extras are not expensive and will give you more capacity for cooking multiple smaller food items.

Leg Rack: Lets you “thread” chicken legs or wings for best cooking results. Instead of being stacked, they hang from the rack for better crisping on the outside.

Rib Hooks: Hang up to 4 slabs of ribs for cooking, each slab up to 11 inches long.

Bunk Bed Basket: Designed for cooking two whole chickens at one time. It makes your cooker much more versatile as you can cook several foods at once without stacking. Use this additional rack to add extra meat, fish, or poultry pieces, or corn and potatoes or other vegetables.

Cover: Protects cooker from weather and is vented to prevent condensation from collecting on the inside.

Where to Buy: If you only want one of these accessories, each one may be priced a couple of dollars lower on the manufacturer’s site, but beware of additional shipping costs.

For the best price, order The Big Easy turkey fryer and the accessories you want at the same time so you can get free shipping on all of it.

Hinged Basket – Available only from manufacturer: This is basically the same size as the basket that comes with the cooker except it’s hinged on the side to open like a clam shell. That can make it easier to remove a large, hot turkey. At this writing the best price I found on this was on the manufacturer’s site. You can buy it here: Easy-out Hinged Basket for the Big Easy Oil-less Turkey Fryer. If you find it elsewhere, look for model number 4184795 to be sure you get the basket that fits The Big Easy Turkey Fryer.

Customer Reviews

A few of the lowest ratings were given because cooking a turkey takes longer than when you fry it in oil. They didn’t realize air frying is a slower process, but of course the trade off is a healthier meal without the messy cleanup or safety issues you have with a deep fat fryer.

Others complain that since Char-Broil has now come out with a hinged basket, it ought to be included with your purchase. They do seem to have a point here. Fact is, though, if you want the hinged basket then count on spending an extra for it (about $20 plus shipping).

Taste is a completely individual matter. You should not expect foods cooked in an infrared turkey fryer to taste absolutely exactly like those deep fried in fat. What you can expect is a crispy outside and very juicy inside. While a few folks expressed some disappointment, the overwhelming majority are completely satisfied with their air fried turkeys as well as the many other foods cooked in your Big Easy turkey fryer. As mentioned in our indoor air fryer reviews, part of it can depend on your attitude and how much you appreciate all the trade-offs, including a healthier meal and a shorter cleanup time.

Other reasons consumers enjoy this cooker include:

frees up oven for other dishes when cooking for crowds

simple to operate and doesn’t require a lot of babysitting

sturdy, large capacity, easy to assemble, and easy to clean up

no more fooling with gallons of oil or the risk of oil fires

pays for itself quickly since you aren’t buying oil

very impressed with juiciness of cooked turkeys and other meats

very pleased with the wide variety of uses for this cooker and the excellent results

While you’ve got a few naysayers claiming you won’t get a “real” deep fat fried taste, the overwhelming majority are delilghted. When it comes to cooking moist and tender The Big Easy really shines, and that goes for turkeys as well as chickens, pork loins, beef roasts and other cuts of meat. Even first-time users report excellent results without a huge learning curve.

About the only warning you’ll find concerns the use of sugar in your rub or marinade. Char-Broil doesn’t recommend it because any kind of sugar tends to blacken or burn. One suggestion is that if you do use a coating with high sugar content, be sure you don’t start cooking before your meat is completely thawed.

Pros

Bestseller that has stood the test of time and still earns rave reviews

Cons

Requires propane tank you must purchase separately if you don’t own one

Fried turkey taste may not be perfectly identical to deep-fat fried

In extreme climates cooker may not maintain heat as well as oil fryers

Char Broil Oil Less Turkey Fryer Review: Summary

The main competitor for this model is the Masterbuilt Butterball oil less turkey fryer, which is electric, and it only carries a 90 warranty. That bothers me a little. This isn’t a terribly expensive appliance, but still, I have to wonder why the warranty is so short.

The Char Broil Oil Less Turkey Fryer has a 1 year warranty, and it’s been on the market long enough to have earned hundreds of customer reviews from numerous sources. Complaints are relatively few, and praise is abundant. The price is very reasonable, and it gets top rankings for quality construction, excellent cooking results, and versatility, as well as ease of assembly, use, and cleanup. For anyone interested in cooking turkeys and many other foods that are not only healthier but delicious too, this model is a great choice.

Comments

I can’t speak from personal experience on fish, but I have seen a few owners mention cooking fish in this oil less fryer. The only one who gave details explained that he inserted the kabob holder through the cavity of a cleaned, whole fish. Logically, it would seem that you could also fry fish using the bunk bed basket, but I don’t know of anyone who has actually done that. The problem I see there is that if you’re cooking small fish fillets, your quantity will be rather limited. That might be fine for a family meal, but maybe not for big crowds.

The answer to your question probably depends on what you want to accomplish. Here in the south we love fried catfish fillets – the terribly unhealthy kind boiled in oil! For a large gathering, you need to be able to cook lots and lots of fish fairly quickly, and many people are accustomed to using a standard oil fryer like the King Kooker. I’m not confident that the Char-Broil is a great substitute for that. You’ll certainly get a much healthier meal with the Char-Broil, but depending on your needs, you may not be able to cook large quantities of fish as fast as you want to.

I’d like to get one of these and I’m not afraid of using gas I’ve got several deep oil fryers and would like something healthier but my concern is I live in Maine and like to cook for football games and Thanksgiving and the new year with temperatures 0 to 20 Will this maintain a temperature or just take a little longer to cook ?

That’s a great question. Where I live, it’s still in the high 80’s every day, in November! However, while I can’t speak from personal experience, this has been discussed numerous places on the web.

You’ll find one very helpful comment in this article: “Trying Out the Char-Broil Oil-Less Infrared Turkey Fryer”. Scroll down to the comment from Jim Bardlsey. He is very pleased with his Char Broil and gives several examples. One is that he cooked a turkey in Denver on a windy day when it was 16 degrees. He does not give details about maintaining temperature inside the cooker, but he does say he added about 20 minutes to his usual cooking time.

In other discussions on this topic, the consensus is that the most significant factor is usually wind. That is, extreme cold won’t affect you as much if you can place your turkey fryer in a location that is sheltered from most or all of the wind. But of course, safety is top priority so choose that location wisely.

I hope that helps and wish you the best – with both your turkey frying and your freezing winter!

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